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Nowhere to Run

A Roundup of Reporting on the Refugee Crisis in Europe

Every day we’re struck by terrible headlines concerning the refugee crisis in Europe: Austria finds 71 migrants dead in a truck. Hungarian police officers fire teargas at migrants. Fifty refugees die in a ship’s hold off the coast of Libya. News like this has become almost commonplace. With the Syrian Civil War raging, ISIS displacing millions in Iraq, Ukraine and Russia at loggerheads, and multiple states in Africa mired in poverty, the number of migrants will surely increase in the months to come. To better understand what is at stake, we’ve compiled some of the best reports from the U.S. and Europe.

Europeans may feel that they are taking on the biggest influx of refugees, but most Syrians fleeing from war never make it to Europe. While the European Union currently hosts about 350,000 Syrian refugees, Lebanon – a country of 4.5 million – has received nearly 1.5 million. The refugees wait in camps and abandoned buildings. For them, as well as for the country that shelters them, life has changed unalterably.

Another year, another record: Germany is expecting more than 800,000 refugees to arrive by the end of this year, 4 times more than the last. Where do they come from, which routes do they take, and what has caused migrant numbers to rise?

Refugees arriving on a beach full of tourists in Greece. A fence set up to seal the border in Hungary. Migrants running after trains and trucks to get from France to England. Flight has many faces – some of them shown in these impressive photographs.

The Greek isles are a new hotspot in Europe’s migrant crisis. More than 150,000 refugees have already arrived this year. The islands of Lesbos, Kos or Chios, which are close to the coast of Turkey, can hardly cope with the influx.

A security fence near the refugee camp in Calais, France. (Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty)

The Jungle is in France, more precisely in Calais. It’s a tent city built out of dark and dirty makeshift shelters for more than 3,000 migrants on their way to England. The future they’re longing for is just a 30-minute train ride away, but police officers and barbed wire make the transit almost impossible. Some migrants have risked uncertain crossing, jumping on trucks, hanging on trains, swimming across open water.

Muhanad is a Syrian father with two daughters. After studying finance and marketing, he worked in the textile industry in Halab, a city known for its textile mills, until his house was bombed. Muhanad and his family decided to escape from the war – first together to Turkey, and then Muhanad on his own to Germany, a perilous odyssey.

The Swedish Radio has collected stories of Syrian refugees on their way to Europe – Muhanad’s escape is one of the featured episodes. Hatem, another refugee, left Syria for Turkey, then to Indonesia and back, before embarking on a four-month long journey across Greece, Slovenia, France, and Belgium to arrive finally in the United Kingdom.

Dead migrants left behind in a truck – the driver is gone. A captain flees from the broken boat on the Mediterranean, leaving the refugees to fend for themselves. Smugglers are too often refugees’ only hope – and their doom.

Germany is the EU country that has taken the most asylum seekers. Some Germans feel overwhelmed by the high number – anti-refugee protests online and in the streets, as well as attacks on refugee hostels, are on the rise. But others are standing up against hate.

The Austrian artist Raoul Haspel released a track last month titled "Schweigeminute (Traiskirchen).” It is a minute of silence that serves as an unconventionally inaudible protest song against the treatment of refugees in Europe.

Just this week, more than 2,000 refugees arrived at the main train station in Munich. Police, aid organizations, and ordinary citizens came to help, offering food, water, diapers and teddy bears, all to say #refugeeswelcome.

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